CHONGQING, May 22 (Xinhua) -- Li Yinhua has collected a box of 567 train and bus tickets over the past 10 years, traveling a total distance of more than 80,000 km, even though she is not a collector, nor obsessed with traveling.
The tickets outlined the trails of Li's dedicated love and support to her husband Lyu Junfei, a serviceman, as well as his serving the nation, despite the long distances between them.
Earlier this year, Li was honored by the Chongqing Corps of the armed police force as one of the "Top Ten Servicemen's Wives."
LONG DISTANCE LOVE
The couple fell in love when they were both students at Yunnan University in the southwestern city of Kunming. After graduation, Lyu joined the Chinese People's Armed Police Force in Chongqing, while Li stayed behind and went on with a graduate program.
Being a girlfriend or wife of a serviceman is never easy, because in many cases it means a long distance relationship as servicemen are often stationed away from home and don't have much time for the families.
"Now that you cannot come to see me, I will go wherever you are," Li told her boyfriend. From then, she embarked upon a journey of "collecting tickets."
The first ticket in her "collection" was for a trip during the National Day holiday in 2009, when she took a train to the eastern city of Hefei where Lyu was undergoing a training. However, their reunion only lasted less than half an hour before Lyu had to go back, leaving her alone in heavy rain.
After Lyu started serving in Qianjiang, southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, Li got adapted to bearing a 26-hour journey for seeing her love.
She collected a total of 57 tickets during this period of distance love. When she finished her graduate study, she declined high-salary job offers and chose to settle down near Lyu's units in Chongqing, working there as a judge assistant.
The couple got married on Jan. 4, 2013, a romantic date that sounds like "Ai Ni Yi Sheng Yi Shi" in Chinese (literally "love you all my life" in English).
DEDICATED SUPPORT
The first 57 tickets saw Li build a family with an armed police soldier, while the remaining 510 tickets told how she became a strong support for her husband and family.
Not long after their son was born in April 2014, Lyu got a promotion. He became too busy to lend Li a hand to take care of the family.
The news that Li's father was diagnosed with cancer added fuel to the fire.
"No matter how hard it is, I must bear it and pull through," Li said.
She struggled to strike a tough balance between her job and the family, all on her own, hoping to let her husband stay focused on his work. Catching the first bus in the early morning with her little son still asleep on her back, and rushing to the hospital to care for her father became her daily routine.
With a packed schedule, she collected another nearly 500 bus fares marking her commute between home, workplace and hospital every day.
The rest of the tickets in the collection had different destinations, far or near, where Li voluntarily managed to solve problems for other servicemen, such as organizing donations for soldiers with financial difficulties, settling disputes or even helping a soldier repair a broken relationship.
"My husband guards our country and I guard my family. It is worthwhile to sacrifice myself so he can concentrate on his work," she said.
